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Infographic: Spam Has The Carbon Footprint of Estonia

Spam takes electricity to produce and send, and electricity usually entails lots and lots of coal.

Add this to the list of reasons spam is the World’s Most Annoying Modern Invention: It destroys the Earth.

According to a new infographic by Antonio Lupetti for Woork Up, spam spews more than 20 million tons of CO2 a year. The biggest polluter is, of course, the United States, which cranks out 20.8 percent of the world’s spam, amounting to 11.4 k/ tons of CO2 a day. India comes in a distant second, with 7.5 percent of global spam production and 4.12 k/ tons of CO2 a day.

To put things in perspective, Lupetti notes that the Icelandic volcano that ground Europe to a halt earlier this year coughs up 150,000 tons of CO2 a day — though it probably isnt the best point of comparison, especially if he’s going for shock value. Assuming the volcano erupts every day at the same rate, its carbon footprint is actually waaaaaaay bigger than that of spam. It might make more sense to look to something like the CO2 emissions of a small country. In that case, spam and Estonia are about neck and neck.

Naturally, pretty much everything that uses energy will leave a carbon footprint, and you could organize the dirty details of practically any industry into a neat infographic and get the eco-scolds angry. But this just gives you more reason to rage next time you see subject line FIRMER AND HARDER ERECTIONS.